Sharing my thoughts and my heart as I journey through life.

Laundry Soap Safety or Smell?

It took me a while to switch to a safer laundry detergent. Because of convenience, I first tried Seventh Generation from the grocery store. It didn’t seem to clean my clothes and I wasn’t fond of the fragrance it had. Truthfully, we are really tied to the fragrance of the detergent of our childhood, silly as it sounds.

My mom always bought the detergent that was on sale, so I didn’t form a bond to a particular brand. But I remember getting hand me downs from our neighbor’s who always used Downy fabric softener. Their old clothes, now my new ones smelled so sweet. Plus their clothes were name brand, and mine came from KMart.

Back then, we didn’t realize the chemicals used to “clean” our clothes were actually bad for us. Now, it is evident that the composition of the things we eat and rub in or against our skin and hair can affect our health. Skin and/or food allergies shown up and we pay attention to them. We understand our bodies are trying to tell us something.

It’s hard to understand all the ingredients in our cleaning products, so I recommend reading Kristen’s article. She checks out the ingredients of the Thieves products and is honest about their EWG ratings.

As you can see from the graphic above, one of the gentlest fabric cleaners has some of the harshest chemicals. I happened to have a bottle of it and couldn’t find the ingredients listed on the label. It referred me to a website, where I didn’t easily find them, so I ended up doing a google search and found the list. How frustrating, no wonder the EWG rating states “may also have poor ingredient disclosure.” Read more about the specific unsafe chemicals here.

Needless to say, I choose to buy the safer product. You can purchase it here. Feel free to contact me for more information at shawnsoilybiz@gmail.com. I’m happy to help!